Red John
fictional serial killer
Red John is a fictional character and the primary antagonist of the CBS crime drama The Mentalist for the first five seasons and in the first half of the sixth season. As a serial killer, he is believed to have begun his killing spree in 1988, and has, with his operatives and acolytes, killed more than 70 people in California, Nevada, and Mexico. Five years prior to the action of the first episode, he murdered the wife and daughter of Patrick Jane (Simon Baker), making Jane his dedicated nemesis.
In the third season finale, "Strawberries and Cream (Part 2)", Jane encounters a man (Timothy Carter, played by Bradley Whitford) in a shopping mall who convinces him he is Red John and whom he subsequently kills. However, after this cliffhanger episode, over the course of the first several episodes of season four, Jane determines that Carter, although a psychopathic killer himself, was not Red John, but one of the killer's many operatives. In the sixth season episode "Red John", the eponymous serial killer's identity is revealed to be Thomas McAllister, the sheriff of Napa County, portrayed by Xander Berkeley. After unmasking himself to Patrick Jane, McAllister discloses that he is the founder and overall leader of the secret organization known as the Blake Association.
TV Guide included Red John in its 2013 list of "The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time".
Character profile
Patrick Jane relentlessly pursues Red John, and ultimately in season 5 narrows his list of suspects to seven. The number of people in series who claim to have met "Red John" is limited.
“Red John” enters the record as fictional serial killer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, fictional and serial can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2109776. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Red John” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.